On the 19th of August, 1825, a treaty was held at Prairie Du Chien with the Sacs, Foxes, Winnebagoes, Chippeways, Sioux, and other northwestern tribes, by William Clarke and Lewis Cass, on behalf of the United States, for the purpose of bringing about a peace between the Sacs and the other tribes. The United States undertook the part of mediators. However pure their motives, the effect was not such as could have been desired. Hostilities continued, and murders frequently happened. In the summer of 1827, a party of twenty-four Chippeways, on a tour to Fort Snelling, was surprised by a band of Sioux, and eight of their number were killed and wounded. The commander of Fort Snelling, caused four of the Sioux to be delivered to the Chippeways, by whom they were shot. Red Bird, a chief of the Sioux, resented the affront, and determined to retaliate. He accordingly led a party against the Chippeways, and was defeated. On his return home, he was derided as being "no brave." Red Bird, disappointed of vengeance upon the Chippeways, resolved to seek it among their abettors the whites; and on the 24th of July, 1827, two whites in the vicinity of Prairie Du Chien were killed, and another wounded; and on the 30th of July, two keel-boats conveying military stores to Fort Snelling, were attacked, two of their crew killed, and four wounded. Black Hawk was charged, among others, with this last offence.

General Atkinson thereupon marched with a brigade of troops, regulars and militia, into the Winnebago country, and made prisoners of Red Bird and six others, who were held in confinement at Prairie Du Chien, until a trial could be had. Red Bird died in prison. A part of those arrested were convicted, and a part acquitted. Those convicted were executed on the 26th of December, in the following year, (1828.)

Black Hawk and Kanonekan, or the youngest of the Thunders, and a son of Red Bird, all of whom had been charged with attacking the boats, were acquitted. Black Hawk was confined for more than a year, before he could be brought to trial; and imprisonment to him was more insufferable than any punishment which could have been inflicted. He could not understand why, if one was guilty, he should not immediately be punished; and if innocent, why he should not be discharged. Imprisonment being regarded by the Indians as evidence of cowardice, presuming they dare not punish the culprit; such a delay of justice exceeded altogether his comprehension.

Black Hawk was discharged merely for want of proof, not for want of guilt. Although doubts upon the subject were once entertained, there was none afterward. His confessions, which he had sense enough to withhold till after his acquittal, were conclusive.

Matters remained in this state for about three years. lence was frequently done, punishment seldom followed. kinson, in 1831, supposed and believed that efforts were in unite all the Indians, from Rock river to Mexico, in a war. from what occurred afterward, that he was not mistaken.

Though vioGeneral Atprogress to

It seems, Black Hawk

in his memoirs of himself, says: "Runners were sent to the Arkansas, Red River and Texas-not on the subject of our lands, but a secret mission, which I am not at present permitted to explain."

A treaty on the 15th of July, 1830, had been made at Prairie Du Chien, by which the Sacs and Foxes ceded all their country east of the Mississippi to the United States. The Sioux, Iowas, and several other tribes, participated in the sale: but Black Hawk had nothing to do with it. Keokuk, or the Watchful Fox, at this time headed the Sacs, who made the treaty. Black Hawk, when apprised of what they had done, disapproved of it, and was much agitated. Keokuk was a friend of the whites, and Black Hawk used to say, that he, (Keokuk,) sold his country for nothing.

In the summer of 1831, Black Hawk says he heard, while on a visit to the Indian agent at Rock Island, for the first time, "talk of their having to leave their village." "The trader," he says, "explained to him the terms of the treaty, and advised him to select a good place for a village, and remove to it in the spring." Keokuk had consented to go, and was using all his influence to induce others to go with him.

A party began now to be organized, in opposition to that of Keokuk. Of this Black Hawk became the head. "I now promised this party,' says he, "to be their leader; and raised the standard of opposition to Keokuk, with a full determination not to leave the village."

The Sac village was on the point of land formed by the Rock river and the Mississippi. Here were about seven hundred acres, which had usually been planted with corn. The Sac village had stood there for one hundred and fifty years; and the country of the Sacs had extended from the mouth of the Wisconsin to the mouth of the Missouri.

About the time of the execution of the treaty of Prairie Du Chien, several petty outrages were committed on the Indians by the whites, which served to exasperate still more those who were already excited.

One of Black Hawk's men having found a hive of bees in the woods, took it to his wigwam. Some whites repaired thither, and demanded it. It was given up. Perceiving some skins in the wigwam, the whites took them also. It was a hard case. The skins belonged to the Indian, and were the result of his winter's hunt. He owed his trader, and without their aid he could neither pay his debt, nor purchase necessaries for his family. Previous to this, Black Hawk himself, it is said, had met with ill treatment from some whites. When hunting alone, they fell upon and beat him, so that he was lame, and disabled for a considerable time. Driven to desperation, he at length took up arms. He was deceived, however, by his friends. He had supposed that the Chippeways, the Ottawas, Winnebagoes, and Pottawatomies, would join his standard; at least he was told so. He was told, also, that their British father at Malden stood ready to help them. His head men had visited Malden, and there been informed, that if they had not sold their country, it could not be taken from them.

Black Hawk, when he first learned that Keokuk had sold the Sac village, with the rest of their country on the east side of the Mississippi, remonstrated with him upon the subject; "and Keokuk was so well satisfied," says Black Hawk, "that he had done what he had no right to do, and what he ought not to have done, that he promised to go to the whites and endeavor to get it back again." Black Hawk, as he informs us, agreed to give up the lead mines, if he could be allowed to enjoy their old village, and the little point of land which their wives had cultivated for years undisturbed, and the graves of their fathers.

Relying on this promise of Keokuk, the Sacs set out on their winter's hunt, in the fall of 1830, as usual. Returning from thence in the spring of 1831, they found the whites in possession of their village, and their own wives and children on the banks of the Mississippi, without a shelter. "This," said Black Hawk, "is insufferable. Where is there a white man who could, or who would endure this? None !-not the most servile slave."

The Indians, having heard during their absence of what was going on, returned earlier than usual. The ice had not yet left the Mississippi. Before it was time to plant corn, their resolution was taken. "Their village, they would" said Black Hawk, "again possess." They acted in accordance with this resolution, and "went on, and took possession." The whites were alarmed; and doubting their ability to drive off the Indians, said, they would live and plant together.

The whites, however, took care to appropriate the best ground to themselves. The Indians having resolved not to be the aggressors,, submitted to a great variety of insults and injuries. Some of their women were severely beaten, for trifling offences; and one young man was so beaten that he died. We have no evidence that retaliation for either was ever attempted. Other evils were also experienced by the Sacs. Ardent spirits were brought thither, and they were cheated out of their property, their guns, and their hunting apparatus.

The Indians had been told, in the. fall of 1830, that they must not come again east of the Mississippi. Soon afterward, the lands they had occupied, or a part of them, were sold to private adventurers, and the Indians were ordered to leave them. Black Hawk, however, and his band, refused to go. The settlers thereupon exclaimed against Indian encroachments; and Governor Reynolds forthwith declared the State of Illinois invaded by hostile savages.

On the 28th of May, 1831, Governor Reynolds wrote to General Gaines, the military commander of the western department, that he had received undoubted information, that a section of the State near Rock Island was invaded by a hostile band of the Sac Indians, headed by Black Hawk; that to repel said invasion, and protect the citizens of Illinois, he had called on seven hundred of the militia of said State, to be mounted and ready for service; and respectfully requested his coöperation. General Gaines in reply, said he had ordered six companies of regular troops

to proceed from Jefferson barracks to the Sac village, and, if necessary, he would add two companies from Prairie Du Chien. This he considered sufficient; but, continued he, if the Indian force should be augmented by other Indians, he would correspond with his excellency by express, and avail himself of the mounted volunteers he had tendered.

The object, said Governor Reynolds, of the State government, is to protect their own citizens, by removing said Indians; "peaceably, if they can; forcibly, if they must."

Governor Reynolds, in his letter to General Gaines, suggests that a request from him to the Indians to remove, might possibly have a salutary effect.

No alternative now remained. General Gaines proceeded at once to the country in dispute, and by discreet and prudent management, succeeded in settling the most prominent difficulties, which amounted on examination to little or nothing. On the 20th of June, 1831, General Gaines wrote to the secretary of war as follows:

"I have visited the Rock river villages, to ascertain the localities and dispositions of the Indians. They are resolved to abstain from hostilities except in their own defence. Few of their warriors were to be seen. Their women, children, and old men, appeared to be anxious, and none attempted to run off. I am resolved to abstain from firing a shot without some bloodshed, or some manifest attempt to shed blood on the part of the In. dians. I have already induced nearly one-third of them to cross the Mississippi; the residue say they will not cross, and their women urge their husbands to fight, rather than to move and abandon their homes."

Thus matters stood till the Illinois militia arrived. On the 7th of June, Black Hawk met General Gaines, and told him he should not remove. On the 25th, the militia arrived. The Indians, to avoid difficulty, fled across the Mississippi; and, on the 26th, the army took possession of the Sac village, without firing a gun.

On the 27th Black Hawk raised a white flag, to indicate his wish for a parley-a parley ensued, and a treaty followed.

General Gaines thereupon wrote to the secretary of war, that the Indians were as completely humbled as if they had been chastised in battle, and less disposed to disturb the frontier inhabitants. Governor Reynolds expressed also a similar opinion. In this, however, they were both mistaken. General Gaines promised the Indians corn, in lieu of that they had been compelled to abandon. The supply, however, was insuf ficient, and they began to feel the effects of hunger. "In this state of things," says Black Hawk, "the Indians went over the river to steal corn from their own land;" and a new series of troubles immediately began. which ended afterward in bloodshed.

Early in the spring of 1832, Black Hawk, regardless of the admonitions of General Atkinson, who was then stationed at Fort Armstrong, (Rock Island,) with a small body of United States troops, recrossed the Mississippi, and commenced his march up the Rock river.

Governor Reynolds thereupon, at the instance of General Atkinson, issued an order for a thousand militia, from the central and southern counties of the State, to rendezvous at Beardstown, on the Illinois river, immediately. This order was promptly executed, and on or about the 15th of April, 1832, a brigade of a thousand mounted men, was armed and equipped for service, and General Samuel Whitesides, who had some experience in Indian warfare, was elected its commander. Colonel, now General Fry, (the present acting canal commissioner,) commanded one of the regiments; Colonel De Witt, of Morgan county, another-the commandant of the third is not recollected. Being thus organized, they commenced their march immediately for Rock Island, upon the Mississippi, where they found General Atkinson, then at Fort Armstrong, with about four hundred regular troops, and a few militia.

General Whitesides, at the head of the mounted volunteers, at once proceeded up the Rock river, on its south side, by way of the prophet's town, which was deserted as they approached, and which they burned as they passed through it to Dixon's ferry. General Atkinson and the militia under his command, at the same time ascended the river in Mackinaw boats, taking with them supplies for the army. General Whitesides, having marched to Dixon's, in advance of the boats for several days, was destitute of provisions; a circumstance exceedingly embarrassing to men, other than those determined, at all hazards, to obey the calls of their country.

On their arrival at Dixon's, they found Major Stillman already there, with two hundred and seventy mounted volunteers from Peoria, Tazewell, and the adjacent counties, well armed, and desirous of being actively engaged. At their own solicitation they were received into the public service, and mustered immediately. General Whitesides was awaiting the arrival of General Atkinson with supplies, when Major Stillman was permitted, at his own solicitation and the solicitation of his men, to make a tour of observation up the river, to the "Old Man's Creek," about fifteen miles north of Dixon's. Instead of returning from thence to the encampment at Dixon's, as they were directed to do, they continued their march some twelve or fifteen miles further up the river to a small stream, (called frequently, but erroneously, the Sycamore,) where, on the 14th of May, 1832, a little before sundown, they dismounted, in order to encamp for the night. Their encampment was judiciously selected in a beautiful oakgrove, destitute of underbrush, on the north side of the stream. While they were thus preparing to encamp, a small party of Indians, five only in number, were discovered at a distance upon a high mound on the prairie. Black Hawk says they bore a white flag, and were sent by him to invite the Americans in a friendly manner to his camp. This, however, is denied by Major Stillman's men. Black Hawk may perhaps have been correct, and the flag not have been seen or recognized by the American troops, excited as they were with the prospect of "an Indian fight." Those whose horses were yet unsaddled, immediately remounted, and